Coos Bay, Oregon, the largest community in Oregon’s Bay Area, got its name from a local Native American tribe. After establishing the need to improve its website, meetings management, and email marketing, Coos Bay selected Granicus as its solution partner; partly due to the consultive collaborative nature of the Granicus Government Experience Cloud. This union resulted in a striking subscriber increase, an impressive email engagement rate, and improved efficiency for city workers.
“I walked in the door saying, ‘Give me a new website, email, and meetings platform.’ And we got that! Our new site is beautiful, and people are super happy having a better view into what our government is doing in their community. But the real value is that you helped us reinvent what government looks like in our community.”
Nichole Rutherford
Assistant City Manager
SITUATION
Coos Bay Assistant City Manager Nichole Rutherford knew the city needed a new website, as well as better meetings and email marketing solutions. Following a traditional strategy to replace outdated government technology, the city was required to review potential vendors and focus on product features and pricing. Granicus was selected for its best-in-breed technologies as well as the Granicus Government Experience Cloud platform approach that features consultative collaboration in a true partner dynamic. This initiative brought changes that went well beyond a simple software update — reinventing the way the city serves and engages its community.
SOLUTION
Reinventing what government looks like requires a deep understanding of both the community’s needs and the concerns and resource limitations of staff. Working collaboratively with Granicus, Coos Bay was able to introduce value to its residents and staff in an iterative way, collecting feedback from the community at every point in the process to help them identify and deliver upon their overall goals.
“Regular chatting with your team helped us identify what we needed… our hopes and dreams. We identified that our goal is excellent delivery of service. What you are doing for us now is helping us speak out loud in the community. Granicus is the tools we are using to do that, but you are also helping us serve our community better.”
Nichole Rutherford
Assistant City Manager
RESULTS
After eight months, the team was ready to launch its new solutions to the public. In just over six months after launching their new communications platform, Coos Bay saw an 89% increase in subscribers, including a significant influx of new subscribers through the Granicus Subscriber Network, who opted into Coos Bay communications after subscribing to other Oregon-based organizations’ communications. An impressive 65% engagement rate illustrated a major improvement in interaction between the local government and the community. The new combination of web, email, and meeting solutions has also improved efficiency for city workers.
“Our staff are already starting to save time. We now know we only have 30 seconds to catch people’s attention, so the ability to have residents say, ‘I only want to receive information on these topics’ is a win for everyone.”
Nichole Rutherford
Assistant City Manager
